


With Love.

by Raynebow_of_the_Rising_Sun



Category: Star Wars Canonverse, Star Wars Post TLJ, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 12:40:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17100773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raynebow_of_the_Rising_Sun/pseuds/Raynebow_of_the_Rising_Sun
Summary: This is a new concept for an old Fic of mine.Rise of the Halcyon was my very first Fanfic experience.  I had read nor written fanfic when I started this story.The original full, novel length fic can be found in my works, but I'm transforming the first 10 chapters of my exclusively Reylo-centric fic into a more expanded and complete minific!I hope you enjoy it!





	1. Chapter 1

The faded inks on the age-silvered pages formed a beautiful looping script that frustrated Rey to no end with it's incomprehensibility.

Whether her eyes were as dry as a noon wind on Jakku from having spent the last few hours hunched over these dusty pages or from staring at a datapad screen translating them, she didn't know. What she did know was that the burning in her eyes was becoming almost as uncomfortable as the throbbing soreness in her spine. She flexed her back to try to relieve some it's discomfort and gingerly closed the tome, wincing as the binding crackled.

In the months she had spent working dilligently on the Jedi Histories she'd managed to translate only four of the ancient volumes. Frustratingly, no two books had been written in the same language nor in any language she was familiar with. 

Rey had spent many hours, sitting alone in the former crystal-mine-turned-rebel-base storage closet that served as her room, translating the small stack of ancient Jedi manuscripts she had smuggled aboard the Millenium Falcon nearly a year ago. The same texts she had stolen from the Jedi Library before leaving the tiny island where she had spent several weeks getting to know Jedi Master Luke Skywalker... and his former student.

Forcefully, she shoved away the thought of *him* as soon as it entered her mind. The only time she would allow herself to think about *him* was when she was in the base training center working on her hand to hand with the person sized heavy bag or practicing with a variety of melee weapons. 

Thinking of him always added an extra bit of determination to her nightly training regime. She knew now what he was capable of and she was highly motivated to learn as much as, get as fast as and as strong as she could before they met again... and she had no doubt they would, soon enough.

Frustrated and distracted, Rey stood up from the tiny sketch board eisel she was using as a work table and twisted her spine to stretch away the tension there. She bent over, touched the ground and stood back up. Not feeling any less compressed she decided that what she really needed right now was a good mind numbing, body punishing work out. 

She wound her way through the labrynthine tunnels and caverns of the Resistance's latest home on some nameless moon in the Hadron system.

Though she spent most of her daytime hours working in her room, she spent her evenings working out until she was far too exhausted to toss and turn at night.

Even exhaustion couldn’t guarantee a good night’s sleep, though. 

Nothing could prevent the dream. 

Her days may be a haze of never-ending monotony, but her nights were a swirl of crimson and flames framing a hulking figure dressed in black. The overwhelming odor of charred flesh, burning silk and blood never failed to assault her senses. Her arm would throb from having been pierced by the vibrodagger-like weapon of one of the dead men that littered the polished floor. Everything, from the temperature of the room to the sweat pouring off of both of them and the tone of his voice, were exactly as they had been in life. 

Everything… except the last words he’d spoken to her.

********

_"Do you want to know the truth about your parents? Or have you always known?" His eyes bored into hers as he stalked toward her, "And you've just hidden it away?"_

_He searched her feelings and said confidently, "You know the truth."_

_His knowing words battered her heart like physical blows. "Say it." He cajoled, "Say it."_

_"They were nobody." Rey admitted - letting go of her fantasies for the first time in her lonely, often miserable life._

_"They were filthy junk traders." He scoffed snobbishly. "Who sold you off for drinking money."_

_His cruely stated, "They're dead, in a pauper's grave in the Jakku desert." jerked tears straight down her face._

_She flinched and looked away. She didn't want to believe him, but he seemed to be enjoying this too much to be lying._

_His face softened slightly and he said with conviction, "You have a part in this story."_

_Her eyes skipped to his face, she looked closely for signs of the man she had thought him to be meer moments ago._

_His black-brown eyes were locked onto hers from the moment she glanced upward._

_In a tone that suggested he was stating the obvious, he continued, "You're my everything."_

_Her breath hitched._

_He face became a jumbled mess of warring emotions, "Always were."_

_She couldn't believe the words coming out of him._

_His head jerked slightly from side to side as if he didn't want to admit it and his mouth seemed to be trying to hold back the words, "Everything to me."_

_She searched his face, unable to imagine that Kylo Ren would say these things to her, but unable to see Ben Solo in his eyes, face, or posture as his hand reached out for her and he implored, "Trust me.”_

_Rey could feel the Force around him churning with what she knew to be the struggle of Ben Solo's light trying to break free from the darkness that the monster Kylo Ren had plunged it into._

_Unable to bear the intensity of his stare or the way his lips trembled, she looked down. His shaking hand swam before her as hot tears poured from her eyes._

_Her heart twinged painfully but she wasn't even sure if she was looking at Kylo Ren or Ben Solo._

_He inched forward his whole being begging her to stay, to never leave him alone, to accept him and love him._

_Her eyes darted back to his._

_A tear spilled down his cheek._

_“Please.” he rasped in a tone that was half a sob and half a plea._

_Breathtaking pain exploded in her chest as her heart shattered upon hearing the wealth of almost hopeless desperation packed into that one lone syllable._

_The sound of blood roared through her ears in time with her pounding heartbeats… Her breath caught in her throat... Her hand reached out... Her fingers inched forward..._

********

Suddenly she'd be looking at the raw stone ceiling of her closet room through a pool of tears.

Every night for nearly a year she’d awakened from that same dream… sweating, crying, breathless and heartbroken.

Every. Single. Night. 

She forced the memory from her mind and stalked purposefully through the winding tunnel to the base training center. She'd learned not to hold out hope of finding someone to spar with. Not since she’d momentarily lost control and smashed poor Finn in the head so hard with a practice sword that he’d spent three days in the base infirmary.

She found the dimly lit cavern completely empty and sighed her relief. No one was there to eye her warily or comment on the force of her new-found savagery. 

Feeling particularly agitated she passed by the racks of practice weapons and went straight for the heavy bag to unleash the fury within her. The big black bag was anchored to the floor on a short tether that prevented it from flying wildly about as she attacked it with every ounce of her anger, disappointment and rage. 

She often found herself imagining it was Kylo Ren’s big, black shrouded body that she was pummeling and tonight was no different in that reguard.

“Why?” She growled. “Why did you have to be such an insufferable ass?” She kicked the bag squarely in the center. 

“Why couldn’t you just stop being a jerk?” She punched it once with each bare fist then rammed her knee into the exact spot her kick had landed.

“Damnit Ben!” She spun around and drove her elbow deep into the sand-filled leather. “I trusted you!” She attacked in a flurry of fists, knees, feet, and elbows until she could barely catch a breath and her muscles were trembling from exertion.

Her rage finally somewhat sated and her muscles aching she sank to her knees and wept with all her heart. 

An all too familiar tingle danced outward from her spine, raising gooseflesh on her sweat-soaked skin. It had been nearly a year since she’d felt that sensation but it was unmistakable. She wiped her face and lurched to her feet.

“Leave.” She demanded, turning to face him. She never wanted to see him again and she made no pretense otherwise.

“You've been crying.” He said after a brief pause.

“Go away and stay away!” She said more forcefully.

“You know I can’t.” His voice was soft. It gave her the impression that he was trying to sooth her. She had no interest in being soothed by him.

“Fine!” She said sharply and stomped away.

His blackclad form materialized in front of her in the doorway of the training center. Her voice vibrated with reignited rage as she stepped around him. “Stay out of my life, Kylo, I never want to see you again!” She spat his name out of her mouth like it was sour.

Anger surged through her as he walked beside her with his eyes seemingly glued to her face. “Kylo?” His voice was laden with bewilderment. “What happened to Ben?”

She snarled. "He was murdered by a monster!” 

He jerked to a halt, “You believe that?” His voice was barely more than a whisper, so soft she couldn’t be sure if it was a question or a statement.

She whipped around, ready to unload all of her pent up anger on him but growled, "Coward!" instead as he withdrew from the connection.

******************************************************

 

Freezing, spattered with grease, dripping from head to toe and absolutely done with today, Rose Tico limped along the raw stone tunnel towards her room. She wanted a hot shower, a hot meal, a hot moment with her fiancé followed by eight solid hours of sleep and she was in just the right mood to be pushy about it.

The old mine that she, and the Resistance, had called home for the past year had been poorly planned, she fumed. A U-shaped water main had ruptured in the narrow shaft that ran deep into the moon's crust along side the main generator cables that powered the entire base. 

Every since she'd been seven, and had accidently broken her big sister's favorite model X-Wing toy, - Paige's favorite among the meager but cherished collection of toys they shared- Rose had been fixing things. It was only natural that she made her living fixing broken things. 

She had never regretted going into maintenance work until today. 

Rose had spent the end of her day half a mile below the deepest part of the base with her back pressed against the cables that were powering the base's life support, gravity generators and maglocks - praying she didnt get electrocuted and/or cause/allow everyone on the base to die. 

It had taken way too long to get a clamp around a four inch blow out on the back side of an ice cold, six inch, durasteel high pressure water line. She was numb from nose to toes by the time she'd succeeded.

According to the schematic, the line was U-shaped, carrying cold water to the heat powered generator insuring it didnt melt from the excessive heat of the vulcanic tube it was possitioned next to, miles below the base and several hundred yards above the bottom of the hollowed out tunnel. 

She could almost feel the water rising, miles down the shaft, rushing toward the generator. Behind her, amidst the power cables, was the hot water return pipe, making her back sweat despite the fact that she was turning blue from the icy spray that ricocheted off the stone behind the pipe in front of her and showered her from chin to hips. 

The return pipe carried hot water throughout the base in overhead bundles of pipes alongside a thick bundle of power cables. The same hot water that the nearly nine hundred inhabitants of the base used. The same hot water that ran through the boiler system that kept their subterrainian base warm enough to inhabit.

She'd struggled for nearly twenty minutes to stop the flow. Twenty minutes of icy hell. She just wanted to get warm and celebrate with Finn about being alive. 

The doorway to their room was such a welcomed sight that she smiled inspite of her misery.

The smile melted off of her face. The door wouldn't open. She pounded on it with the side of her fist, "Finn?" She called. "The door is jammed!"

She heard a muffled scuffle and a strong oath from inside the room and her heart sputtered. "Finn?"

"Yeah, just a second!" He called back.

She frowned, suddenly feeling a strange urge to run away.

A minute later the low-tech door swung inward to reveal Finn. 

"What happened to you?" He gaped, slightly wild-eyed and breathless.

She brushed past him grumbling, "A water main broke." before she spotted his guest. "Oh, hey Poe." She smiled her relief. For a moment there she'd feared it was something… or someone else that had kept her dripping in the hall for over a minute.

"I don't mean to be rude, but I need a hot shower, desperately." She said, crossing over to retrieve some dry clothes from the trunk at the foot of the bed. "I'll just be a minute." She closed the lid and stood up.

Rose frowned. Hadn't she made the bed this morning before heading into work? She almost always did. She wasn't rushed this morning, so she was pretty sure she had. 

She turned toward Finn, the question dying on her lips as her eyes met his. She turned her wide eyes to Poe. He was leaning against her tool cluttered work table. His olive skin and ears were aflame, his eyes downcast, his hair touseled unattractively, his lips red and swollen.

She looked back to Finn, his lips were reddened and swollen as well. The clothes slipped out of her hand and she let out a choked gasp. Shaking her head, her eyes darting from one to the other, she backed toward the door. 

"No." She croaked, shaking like a leaf.

"Rose!" Finn rushed to grab her by both arms. Pleadingly he said, "Please, baby, let me explain."

Rose jerked one arm lose but he caught it again and held on tighter. "Rose! Please! I love you! Please don't go!"

"You love me?" She gasped incredulously, locking eyes with him.

The past year flashed through her mind, hundreds of days and nights spent crazily in love with this stranger who looked like Finn. Exactly like Finn. With tears on his cheeks.

"I do, Rose. I love you with all my heart!" He sobbed. "I do!"

"Then tell me why you're cheating on me!" She shrieked.

"Because I love him, too!" Finn's voice trembled. "I love you both."


	2. Chapter 2

The snick of the pen against paper soothed Kylo as nothing else could these days. The eyes staring back at him from the creamy page had been haunting him for nearly a year. He had drawn her a hundred times but he could never draw the pain from her eyes.

In the brief moments he’d spent with her he had commited to memory her every sharp angle and soft curve. He knew the features of her face better than he did his own. He drew her with such exacting attention to detail that he could almost feel her presence. He had a box brimming with ink drawings of her tucked away in the locked bottom drawer of his wardrobe. 

He had drawn her looking fierce, as she had when she’d attacked him on Starkiller base. He had drawn her looking vulnerable as she had the night she’d told him about her vision of the mirror. He had drawn her looking angry as she had when she’d called him a monster. He had drawn her hundreds of different ways, but there was always pain in her gaze. 

No matter the expression on her face, her eyes were always the same. The same eyes she’d glared down at him with the last time their minds had connected. The pain in them silently accused him of betraying her. The disappointment in them almost palpable.

Those eyes despised him almost as much as he despised himself for making them look that way.

He hadn’t seen her since the rebel base on Crayt. She had disappeared from his life, but never from his mind, she haunted him. He could almost handle it during the day, but nights were another matter. 

In his dream, always the same dream, she'd be standing in front of him amidst the destruction in the red room. He would hear himself say the things he hadn't had to words or the courage to say to her.

She would gaze up at him, her soft brown eyes shining with tears. He’d reach out to her and she’d reach back for him. Every night their fingers would almost touch. Every night he would be jolted awake trembling, his eyes swimming in tears, his chest so tight he could barely breathe, just as he'd felt when her fingers had inched toward his before she had ripped her light saber out of his other hand. 

The question of whether she would have taken his hand if he had said in reality what he'd said in the dream had him in the training room most nights driving himself to near exhaustion so he wouldn't lie awake half the night pondering it.

He set the delicate pen down next to the drawing and stood up to let the blood flow back into his numb legs. 

An electric tingle started in his spine and spread outward in a way he’d been longing to feel for a very long time. He took a deep steadying breath and turned to face her.

“Leave.” She snarled without preamble.

He slid a gaze down her body, taking in every detail.

Much of her hair had escaped it's confining tie to either hang wetly past her shoulders or cling to the blotchy red skin of her sweat soaked face and neck.  
There were dark smudges beneath her red rimmed eyes and the moisture that clung to her wet lashes looked an awful lot like tears.

Her chest heaved with every breath, her clinging top nearly dripping, even the bit of bare calf between her britches and boots was glistening with sweat.

Blood oozed through the thin skin covering her knuckles, he'd seen that same injury on his own hands enough to know that it came from foregoing sparring gloves while training and he suddenly realized she’d been using a punching bag. Judging by the state of her, he surmised, there must be nothing left of it but dust on the floor.

He suppressed a smile. She was so fierce!

He tore his gaze away from the bead of moisture creeping maddeningly down the side of her throat and met her eyes.

“You’ve been crying.” He hadn't meant to speak that thought aloud and certainly not in such a dazed tone.

“Go away and stay away!” Her eyes nearly burned him with the heat of her anger. The venomous inflection in her tone should have hurt but he was too happy to see her to let a little thing like her obvious fury bring him down.

Looking like she'd sooner tear him apart than talk to him, dripping sweat, hair a mess, hands oozing blood, furiously belligerant... None of that mattered, the important part was that she was here, standing right in front of him making him ache to hold her, to kiss the tears from her eyes, to lick the sweat from her skin...

“You know I can’t.” His voice sounded pathetic even to his own ears, soft and buttery. He felt heat creeping into his face and hoped she was too infuriated to notice his weakness.

“Fine!” She spat, her eyes flashing in a way that made his chest twinge. She spun to the side and marched away. The sight of her walking away made him have to swallow a sudden excess of moisture in his mouth. She disappeared through the wall of his room.

A heartbeat later she stepped out of thin air and jerked to a stop right in front of him. She flicked a glare up at him and he felt his insides turn to ice as she stepped around him with a vehement, “Stay out of my life, Kylo, I never want to see you again!”

Shocked by hearing her refer to him that way he followed alongside her without even thinking about it. She’d never called him that. Not once. She’d called him Monster, she’d called him Murderous Snake, she'd even called him a creature in a mask and those had hurt… but hearing her call him Kylo like it was a curse hurt worse than having his face laid open by her light saber. 

“Kylo? What happened to Ben?" He asked in confusion then regretted asking the question more than he regretted a great many things when she snarled accusingly, “He was murdered by a monster!” 

He’d suspected she’d be angry when next they met but he had never imagined she could possibly think of him that way after what had passed between them a year ago.

“You believe that.” He could actually feel a physical pain shooting through his chest, sharp and hot like a blaster bolt. Her profile swam before his eyes for only a heartbeat as he reeled away from force of anger that blasted toward him through his link to her mind. 

A wave of pain crashed against him, dropping him to his knees. He could still feel her rage as if she were right next to him. 

It occured to him that every time they'd spoken he'd managed to say something that had driven a wedge between them. The man that was somehow both -and yet somehow neither- Kylo Ren and Ben Solo was assaulted by the fear that he may have already driven them too far apart to ever wind up together.

******************************************************

Finn paced across the apartment sized room he shared with the woman he loved to distraction. He had never known such happiness could exist until he'd fallen in love with Rose Tico. She was his world.

And his misery.

*I have to give him up, for Rose's sake,* he told himself as he paced nervously back and forth from the door to the untidy work table on the otherside of the room, in the corner beyond the foot of the bed. 

It wasn't that he didn't love Poe every bit as much as he did Rose. He did. But Poe would never agree to being in an open relationship with him. And Finn wasn't willing to continue to hide and sneak around behind anyone's back anymore. He'd never planned to start doing so in the first place. He wanted someone to hold in the night and laugh with over dinner. Rose was all of that and more for him.

Finn understood Poe's reasoning, he truly did, but he had needs that couldn't be fulfilled by a secret lover, he wanted a life partner… 

He and Rose had set the date for their wedding, in bed this morning. 

It was time to end things with Poe. 

A sharp double rap on the door sent his heart surging. Poe had finally arrived. Finn let him in and locked the door.

Sometime later, they lay in each other's arms for what they both knew would be the last time, cherishing every second they had left. A pounding on the door followed by Rose's muffled voice shattered the spell and sent Finn and Poe scrambling for their clothes.

Both dressed hurriedly and Finn took a calming breath before he opened the door to his fiancé

"What happened to you?" He gaped, slightly wild-eyed and breathless.

Rose brushed past him mumbling, "A water main broke." 

"Oh, hey Poe." She smiled at The Resistance general as he leaned conspicuously against the work table on the other side of the room as she crossed to the clothes locker at the foot of their bed. "I don't mean to be rude, but I need a hot shower, desperately. I'll just be a minute." She closed the lid and stood up, her eyes fixed on the rumpled bed.

Neither man had thought to drape the blanket back over the snarled sheets and it hung half on and half off of the bed in a tell-tale way that made Finn feel about an inch tall.

Rose turned to him, a question in her eyes that died swiftly when they met his. Her wide, shocked eyes turned to Poe. Finn followed her gaze and saw his beloved's olive skinned face and ears aflame, his eyes downcast, his hair touseled, his lips red and swollen. Finn swallowed hard against the lump in his throat.

Rose turned her eyes back to him and the clothes slipped out of her hand as she made a choked sound. Her eyes darting from one to the other, she headed for the door. 

"No." She croaked as he pulled her to a stop and found that she was shaking like a leaf.

"Rose!" He begged, taking her by both arms, "Please, baby, let me explain."

Rose jerked one arm lose but he caught it again and held on tighter. "Rose! Please! I love you! Please don't go!"

"You love me?" She gasped incredulously, finally looking him in the eyes.

"I do, Rose. I love you with all my heart!" He sobbed, desperate for her to believe him. "I do!"

"Then tell me why you're cheating on me!" She shrieked.

"Because I love him, too!" The way she flinched ripped his guts open, he hated the pain he was causing the two people he loved and cherished above everything, including life itself. "I love you both." 

He looked at Poe and swore vehemently, "I love you both." before turning his gaze back to Rose. "Things got out of hand but, I swear to you, I was breaking up with him."

Rose looked at Poe, who nodded wearily and said, "He did break up with me."

"How long have you been seeing each other?" She gasped, pinning them both with outraged stares of fiery steel.

"Since before you woke up after Crayt." Finn confessed.

Her jaw snapped shut and she glanced from Finn to Poe and back to Finn. "While I was out of it?"

"Please try to understand, I was distraught… I was inconsolable. You were out for so long, and the doctors didn't know if you'd ever wake up…" His whole body begged her to understand. 

"Poe was there for me. He sat by your bed with me for hours... he was my comfort when they told us you might not make it." Finn let go of Rose, who had stopped struggling sometime ago. "Neither of us meant for anything to happen! But we fell in love."

"You've been in love with him the whole time we've been together?" She sputtered in a thin reedy voice.

"I'm so sorry I hurt you!" He was crying in earnest now, as was Poe. "But I love you both with all my heart!"

"How could you? You've been lying to me since the beginning!" She accused.

"I had to!" He said. "I love you and I can't bear to lose you!" 

"You can't be in love with two people at once!" She snapped.

"I can," He insisted. "And I am." He leaned down, bringing his eyes level with hers. "You love me, right?"

"I don't even know you!" She spat, clearly hurt and angry.

"Yes, you do! You know me better than anybody!" He swore. "And you do love me." It wasn't a question this time. "You love your sister, too… just as much as you love me."

"That's different!" She insisted.

"No, it isn't! People can love more than one person with everything they've got." He insisted. "I love you, I am in love with you, and I feel the same way about him." He looked at Poe. "I really do."

Poe nodded glumly but didn't meet his eyes.

"Before I woke up…" A frown marred her features. She glanced at each of the two devistated men. "We didn't get together for a month after I woke up…" Her expression changed to one of shocked disbelief, in a dazed tone she nearly whispered, "I'm the other woman." She turned to Poe, "You must hate me."

Poe straighted up and gave her a gentle smile, "No, Rose, I don't hate you." He crossed the tiled floor to wrap his arms around her just as gently. "I could never hate you for giving him what I can't."

She pulled away. "Why can't you? This isn't some backwater hellhole, you two being gay wouldn't even have caused a sensation around here."

"I'm not gay." Poe frowned. "I've never been into guys."

"You're just in love with one?" She asked archly, her brows shooting toward her hairline.

"Yeah." He frowned. "I'm not gay, I'm just… in love with my best friend who happens to be a man."

"So…you're saying you're not gay - gay, you're Finn gay?" She asked, almost as if she was amused by the concept.

She turned to Finn. "Let me guess, you're Poe gay?"

"You're the only woman I've been with." His face darkened with a flush, all but the apples of his cheeks, which lightened and took on a pinkish tinge. "That's just how it is when you're a Stormtrooper, Phasma was the only Female trooper in the entire First Order..." he explained. "And we were forbidden to socialize outside our corps."

"And you never told me that." She said quietly but firmly.

"How could I without changing things between us?" Finn asked, his voice heavy with sadness. "These past eleven months with you were too wonderful to risk losing. And the past year with him has been just as wonderful. You've both made me so happy that I walk around on clouds all day, anticipating the next time we're alone together the whole time we're apart! I absolutely worship the ground you walk on. I never even knew I could be as happy as I have been this year."

"Do you love him as much as you love me?" She asked, her voice calm.


	3. Chapter 3

One week later…

Rey jerked awake with tears pouring down the sides of her face into her hair, her heart pounding and her lungs gasping for air.

The dream never failed to exact it’s toll. 

Sitting up, she wiped at the tears with trembling fingers, turned sideways, dropped her feet to the cold stone floor and scrubbed her face with both hands. The scabs covering her much abused knuckles pulled painfully and one broke open, she stared at the trickle of blood running down the middle finger of her right hand. Watched it gather on the tip of her chewed up nail until it formed a single fat droplet that splattered on the floor between her bare feet. 

The sudden tingle in her spine was the very last thing she wanted to feel right now. Her eyes made it only as far as a crisp white sheet draped untidily across his lap before bouncing back to the blood on the floor. She forced her eyes to remain on that lone drop between her feet though his bare toes were scant inches from hers. “This really isn’t a good time.” She said thickly around the lump in her throat. She had no desire to speak to him under the best of circumstances and this was certainly not one of those. 

“I couldn’t agree more.” He sounded every bit as reluctant as she felt.

Silence stretched uncomfortably between them as she did her best to recover herself from the dream. After what seemed like an enternity his curiously husky voice startled her by asking, “Bad dreams?”

“Just one.” She admitted, wondering if he could read her mind from where ever he was. 

“Me, too.” She couldn't stand to hear the softness in his tone, it was too intimate, too devastating, she had change the subject.

“Why is this happening again?” She tried to summon her fury but she found herself too distracted by the situation to locate the gnawing anger that his presence should have ignited. 

"Why now?" Her head refused to wrap itself around the fact that she was, for all intents and purposes, sitting inches away from him while neither of them had on much more than a scrap of white cloth.

“I don’t know.” The low, husky, intimate quality of his voice sent tingling chills dancing across her skin when he added, “Look at me, Rey.”

When their minds had connected unexpectedly, a year ago, the sight of his shirtless back, shoulders, chest, and arms had stolen her breath away, but this - his near total nudity - was so much worse than that. The sight stole her ability to breathe, speak, and think. His naked proximity set her insides to fluttering erratically, her heart to pounding and her bones to melting. 

“There has to be a reason.” His heavy lidded gaze was just as soft as his voice. He tilted his head slightly. “What was your dream about?”

Her eyes dropped away from his to an absolutely fascinating thin line of dark hair that began just below his navel and disappeared beneath the edge of the sheet in his lap. She shook her head, unable to speak, unwilling to tell him anything. 

“Mine was about you.” He said with an air of confession. “It’s always about you.”

“Always?” She nearly choked on the word as her eyes shot back to his.

“Always. Everynight. The same dream.” He said haltingly and leaned forward, watching her like a hungry predator. “About you.”

“The red room.” She whispered and saw the ripple of shock that crossed his face. “Why?" She didn't want to ask but she had to know, "Why didn’t you choose me?" 

“I did choose you.” His lie sounded so sincere she could almost believe that he believed it. “I chose you over Snoke. I chose you over the darkside. I chose you over everything.”

“You chose to replace Snoke!” She said with a welcomed burst of anger lending strength to her voice. “You chose to allow your own mother to be shot at when you could have stopped it! You chose the First Order over the lives of everyone who ever loved you!” She finished, hating the brittle sound of her own voice and the tears stinging her eyes.

“Like Luke?” He asked, his voice carrying an edge of anger to match her own. “He tried to murder me!” 

He scooted forward, his knees and feet coming to rest on the outsides of hers. “My mother? She ignored me my whole life and then sent me away just when I needed her the most!" 

His narrowed eyes sparkled dangerously, "Or my father? A man I've seen maybe five times since the age of ten?” He leaned in so close she could feel his hot breath against her face. “They never loved me." He said bitterly. "Nobody has ever cared about me.”

“That’s not true!” She snapped at him. “Your mother always loved you! Your father! Your uncle! They died trying to save you! I risked my life trying to save you!”

“Why?” He asked, his eyes searching hers. “Why did you do that?”

“You know why I did it.” She said feeling accutely uncomfortable.

“Say it.” He sounded almost beathless.

She clamped her jaw shut, refusing to comply.

“Say it, Rey. Why did you come to the Supremacy? Say it.” He demanded with a hint of something akin to desperation in his voice.

She shook her head and remained silent. He stared at her, his face so impassive might have been carved in stone if not for the intensity of his gaze. Long minutes passed while he stared her down, his utter stillness a demand as loud as any shout. She hated the way it made her feel to have him staring at her like this.

“I’ve loved you from the start.” He blurted, shattering the silence. 

“What?” She yelped and jerked backwards reflexively.

He took a deep audible breath and said, “The forest on Takodona, you tried to shoot me, remember?” His lips twisted in a way that was not quite a smirk. “You were so fierce! Not a speck of fear in you! If not for the Force you’d have killed me a dozen times over. When I saw into your mind, I knew then… I had to have you… it was all I could do not to fall at your feet and beg you to love me.” He reached one trembling hand towards her face. 

“That’s not true.” She said breathlessly. Leaning away from his hand, she clamped his wrist firmly to stop it’s progress. “I was terrified on Takodona.” She said, pushing his hand back towards him and took an unsteady breath. 

His face crestfallen, his shoulders slumped in defeat, he sighed, “Only after I froze you.” 

“No, I was terrified from the moment I felt you nearby.” She insisted. “I could feel danger and rage and pain rolling off of you like a hot wind... I thought you meant to murder me.” She couldn’t bear to watch the way his face was contorting as he attempted to regain control of himself.

Dropping her eyes, she found that lonely drop of blood between her feet and stared at it as she continued to speak. “When I woke up in those restraints, and saw you… I thought you meant to torture me." She paused to take a deep breath before plunging ahead. "Everytime I was near you I expected to die screaming.” 

“I was frightened of you but I was drawn to you. I saw you murder Han Solo, a man I admired, but i felt your pain even more keenly than my own." Her eyes flicked upwards to his. "Then after… in the woods… you nearly killed the only friend I’d ever had. I wanted to kill you. I needed to end your reign of terror.” 

She looked back down at the blood on the floor. “But there was something holding me back." Her voice was growing more unsteady by the moment. "I was relieved when the ground split open between us.”

“I had so many nightmares about that fight.” She could feel a prickle in her eyes and paused to steady herself. 

“When this,” she waved her hand back and forth between them. “This mind thing started happening I never imagined I’d come to see you so differently.”

She looked up, into his eyes. “You were Kylo Ren, the most terrifying creature in the galaxy… and then you weren't…"

She frowned, and looked away from him before continuing, “I thought I'd found this whole other person, buried down deep inside of you." 

Her eyes took on a far away softness. "Someone real and solid… Who didn't just tell me I wasn't alone but made me really believe it." 

Her voice went raw and throaty. "Someone who so understood how lonely I was that he had tears in his eyes just to hear me speak of it." 

She rubbed her thumb absently across her tingling fingertips and continued, "Someone who cared so much that his hand shook just to be reaching for mine." 

She looked back into his eyes, "It broke my heart to think of how he'd been driven into an impossible choice between the Darkside that welcomed him or the Lightside that feared him." 

Her broken heart leapt into her throat, nearly choking her. "I thought that if I could just show him how much I cared, he would surely turn back to the light. I was so sure that he was worth dying for that I risked everything to try to save him."

Her eyes sharpened, her face darkened, "I nearly died trying to save him," voice cracking like a whip she spat, "from you!” 

“But there was no saving him, was there?" She seethed. "Because he never existed, he was nothing but a cruel illusion that you used to seduce me!" The wound from that was still a raw and bleeding thing.

"When you were in my head you saw how lost I was, how much I needed to have someone give a damn! And you used that to manipulate me! I was just a tool for you to use to usurp power from your master!" She threw the last word at him like a hate grenade. 

"You never cared about me at all!" She accused. "You were just using me the whole time!"

Her whole body vibrated with hatred, “And you have the nerve to sit here and tell me this pack of lies? Do you honestly expect me to believe that you love me?" 

"You? Kylo Ren?" She scoffed then snarled, "You really are a monster!" 

With no concious thought to do it her hand snaked out and slapped him across the face so hard it stung her fingertips almost numb.

In an instant she was alone in her room again. 

******************************************************

Rose blinked back tears, holding herself together by the skin of her teeth. She took a deep calming breath and glanced at Poe then back to Finn. "Do you love him as much as you love me?" She asked as calmly as she could manage, which she was surprised to find was pretty calmly despite her shell shocked state.

Finn dropped back a step, a bewildered look on his face. He swallowed hard before answering, "I do."

"Don't." Poe begged. "Don't say that."

Finn turned to Poe, "I do." He repeted. "I love you both so much that I'm done lying about you to each other. I'm done lying to myself, too." His teary eyes flicked back and forth between them. "I don't want to lose either one of you." He turned to Poe, "I don't want to give you up. I love you."

Poe choked out, "I know."

Rose's heart was so broken that she had no idea how it was still beating let alone how it could actually hurt even more at the obvious pain written on Poe's face and clogging his voice. 

Poe had been a constant thread of her life since she'd awakened from a weeks long coma after crashing her skimmer into Finn's to save him from sacrificing himself on Crayt. Rose considered Poe as much her friend as Finn's. "How could you be my friend?" She asked him. "How could you share meals with us, hang out with us, with *me*… and be my friend when we're both in love with the same person?"

Poe wiped at his cheeks, "Because you're my friend, and I care about you. And hecause you make him happy - you're everything to him that I could never be." He answered, his entire being exhuding sincerely. "And because you're a beautiful human being that I couldn't bring myself to resent even if I wanted to... which I don't."

Rose stared at Poe, speechless, as she struggled to think a coherent thought. Her brain was spinning like one of the gaming wheels in the casino on Canto Bight - far too fast to pick a single thought to latch onto. Her eyes darted to Finn, who looked as devastated as she felt.

Unable to cope with or process everything she'd just seen, heard, and learned, Rose fled from the pain in her beloved's eyes - but she couldn't flee from the pain inside of her. The pain that seemed to worsen with each tear-blinded step that she took through the tangled labrynth of tunnels. 

She ran, sobbing, toward a destination she wasn't even aware of until she found herself in the utilities junction room far below the main part of the base. The very place she'd just fled from before finding her fiancé in the arms of another person. Unlike when she had left twenty minutes ago, it was blessedly empty now.

Rose collapsed into a heap of wet overalls and bawled her heart out.


	4. Chapter 4

His eyes flicked open in the darkness of his room aboard the First Order's brand new flagship, Vader’s Vengeance.

As always, it was the dream that had awakened him. He sat up and swung his legs off of the edge of the plush matress. Being Supreme Leader had it’s perks, but unfortunately dreamless sleep wasn’t one of them. 

Reaching out with the Force he flicked on the small reading lamp next to his bed.

He wiped the tears off of his face and looked at his trembling hands. The dream never left him anything but devastated and tonight was no exception. The pain in his chest was just as fresh and raw as it had ever been. The pressure constricting his lungs was making breathing a chore. It was a chore he didn’t actually want to be doing at the moment.

He almost didn’t notice the tingle in his spine amidst his other pains and complaints. In a heartbeat the pressure in his chest released allowing him to take in a gulp of air as he jerked the bedsheet haphazardly over his lap. His darting eyes spotted her the moment she appeared.

“This really isn’t a good time.” She said without preamble.

He could tell by the hoarseness of her voice, her tousled hair, and rumpled bed clothes that she had just awakened, too... If you could call the clinging, whispy scrap of white linen she was wearing bed clothes. 

He had to swallow his heart before he could speak.

Reluctantly dragging his eyes away from her maddeningly parted bare thighs he groaned, "I couldn't agree more."

He couldn’t help staring at her. She, in that nighty, was without a doubt the most amazing thing he’d ever seen in his life. Held up by two thin straps, it had a rounded neckline that bared most of her chest. 

The thin material did more to draw his eyes to the twin, slightly darker, spots beneath than to hide them. And the way it draped across her thighs! Dear Force! It was so short that if she spread her legs even another inch he’d be able to see far more of her than he’d ever bothered to hope for. 

“Bad dreams?” He rasped when he finally remembered how to speak again.

“Just one.” She said, staring at the floor between her feet. 

He glanced at the floor and noticed a tiny red splatter. It bothered him that he hadn’t noticed the damaged state of her knuckles until then. 

He frowned at her hands. She’d been beating the hell out of her punching bag again. A part of him wanted to scold her for not using sparring gloves. Instead of doing so, however, he found himself nearly whispering, “Me, too.”

“Why is this happening again?” Her voice sounded almost as desperate as he was feeling. "Why now?"

He had pondered that very question so many times, yet he still had no answer. "I don’t know.” He admitted.

As much as he enjoyed the freedom to stare, and he thoroughly did, he needed to see those soft brown eyes of hers. "Look at me, Rey.”

She took a ragged, audible breath and her eyes flicked from the floor to his face. She didn't seem surprised by his state of undress. She must have looked at him already, he realized. He hoped she hadn’t caught him gawking. 

Putting his errant thoughts aside he concentrated on the question. “There has to be a reason.” A sneaking suspicion entered his mind. “What was your dream about?”

She shook her head slightly, refusing to answer.

“Mine was about you.” He confessed, suddenly overcome by the need to tell her about the dream. “It’s always about you.”

“Always?” She nearly choked on the word.

“Always.” He repeated, noting that her breathing was becoming more harsh with each exhale.

“Everynight.” Her lips parted. 

“The same dream.” Her eyes widened. 

He leaned forward. “About you.”

“The red room.” She whispered and his heart skipped a beat. 

“Why?" She asked sharply even as her eyes welled up with tears. “Why didn’t you choose me?”

“I did choose you.” He said, devastated that she didn't seem to understand that. 

“I chose you over Snoke.” He could never regret doing so, no matter how angry she was at him.

“I chose you over the dark side.” It was true. In the past year he'd even learned to tamp down his hatred for General Hux... enough to not act on the nearly constant urge to torment the pissant for the sheer enjoyment of it, anyway.

“I chose you over everything.” The vehemence in his voice was too telling, but he didn’t care anymore. He wanted her know that she had hurt him.

“You chose to replace Snoke!” She snapped. "You chose to allow your own mother to be shot at when you could have stopped it!” 

He hadn't known his mother was alive when he'd declined to stop firing at the rebel shuttles. He didn't even find out for several months afterward that she had survived the vacuum of space.

“You chose the First Order over everyone who ever loved you!” She looked and sounded as heartbroken about that as he was at hearing the heartbreak in her voice.

“Like Luke?” He sneered, unable to keep the anger out of his voice. “He tried to murder me!"

He scooted forward, looked hard into her eyes from so close he could see the gold flecks in her irises even in the low light being cast by his bedside lamp. “My mother? She ignored me my whole life and then sent me away when I needed her the most!" 

He squinted at her, "Or my father? A man I've seen maybe five times since the age of ten?” He leaned in so close their noses almost touched. “They never loved me.” he scoffed bitterly. “Nobody has ever cared about me.”

“That’s not true!” She snapped at him. “Your mother always loved you! Your father! Your uncle! They died trying to save you! I risked my life trying to save you!” She finished accusingly.

He’d wondered about that so many times he couldn’t help but leap at the chance to ask, “Why?” He searched her face for clues, once again frustrated at not being able to use the Force to search her mind from across the galaxy. “Why did you do that?”

“You know why I did it.” She mumbled.

“Say it.” He sounded a bit breathless, even to his own ears.

A muscle in her jaw twitched and she shook her head almost imperceptibly.

“Say it, Rey. Why did you come to the Supremacy?" He needed so badly to hear her say that she cared about him. Even if she only cared a tiny bit, it would be enough, he told himself. "Say it."

She shook her head mulishly and remained silent.

He stared at her, willing himself to wait for her to say it. Long minutes passed while he stared her down. Long minutes during which he hardly dared breathe. He didn’t want to rush her but eventually it became clear that she intended to wait him out.

After waiting so long he was slightly dizzy from lack of air, he decided that if she wouldn’t say it, he would. 

“I’ve loved you from the start.” He would have preferred to say it a little slower, with a lot more style, but as soon as he’d opened his mouth the words had come bursting out. He felt his face redden.

"What?” She yelped and flinched away from him.

That wasn't the reaction he was hoping for.

He decided to try it again and took a deep breath to steady himself. “The forest on Takodona, you tried to shoot me, remember?” He fought hard to suppress a grin at the memory. “You were so fierce! Not a speck of fear in you!” He’d followed her Force signature that day, literally feeling his way toward her. She had been so determined to protect her rebel friends, that it never crossed her mind to fear for her own safety… not until he’d frozen her anyway. “If not for the Force you’d have killed me a dozen times over." He took a ragged breath.

She’d been magnificent in her courage. Anyone else might have been terrified at being stalked through the woods by Kylo Ren, Jedi Knight of the First Order, but not her. She’d only been feeling an overwhelming desire to kill him that he could feel from a hundred meters away. 

“When I saw into your mind, I knew then… I had to have you… it was all I could do not to fall at your feet and beg you to love me.” The depth of her loneliness had touched something deep inside of him. The way she fought his mind probe with nothing but raw, untrained power and an almost savage ferocity had intrigued him. When she'd broken into his mind he had been awe-struck.

She was a potent combination of softness and strength all wrapped up in such a lovely package that he had been drawn to her like a magnet. He still was.

He reached out, his fingers tingling with the need to caress the tears from her face… before he could fulfill that need she intercepted his hand and shoved it away from her. 

He struggled to swallow his disappointment.

“That’s not true.” She said almost as breathlessly as he felt. “I was terrified on Takodona.” She took an unsteady breath. 

“Only after I froze you.” He countered, feeling almost too deflated to sit upright.

“No, I was terrified from the moment I felt you nearby.” She said stubbornly.

He opened his mouth to argue but she cut him off by continuing to speak. 

“I could feel danger and pain and rage rolling off of you like a hot wind. I thought you meant to murder me.” 

In truth he had meant to kill her and take the droid, but that intention was long gone by the time he had found her. It was not easy to admit, even to himself, that he had at one time intended to kill her… before he had gotten close enough to really feel her.

“When I woke up in those restraints, and saw you… I thought you meant to torture me. Everytime I was near you I expected to die screaming.” She paused to take a deep breath. 

He wanted her to stop, her words were cutting him to the quick, but he could feel that he needed to hear her out, so he held his silence.

“I was frightened of you but I was drawn to you.” She said to his belly.

He wished she didn’t sound so unhappy about that last part, but it was understandable, he supposed.  
“I saw you murder Han Solo, a man I admired, but I felt your pain even more keenly than my own.” Her voice became raw.

Killing Han Solo was supposed to have ended his internal struggle against the light, according to his master, but all the deed had done was hurt him far more intensely than anything his father had ever done or neglected to do.

“Then after… in the woods…” Her eyes flicked upwards to meet his. “You nearly killed the only friend I’d ever had. I wanted to kill you... I needed to end your reign of terror.” She looked away again.

“But there was something holding me back... I was relieved when the ground split open between us.”   
He had been, too. He hadn’t been ready to die. Not when he’d just discovered how powerful she was… and how much he wanted her.

“I had so many nightmares about that fight.” Her eyes welled with fresh tears, but she blinked them away. 

He had woken up screaming, more than once, from dreams that he had lost control and killed her during that duel.

“When this,” Rey waved her hand back and forth between them. “mind thing started happening I never imagined I’d come to see you so differently.”

His heart started pounding. 

She was getting closer to the point, he could feel it even across the galaxy.

She looked up, into his eyes. “You were Kylo Ren, the most terrifying creature in the galaxy… and then… you weren’t.” 

She looked away, past his shoulder, “I thought I'd found this whole other person, down deep inside of you." She took a shaky breath and continued in a voice so soft and warm it made his skin tingle. "Someone real and solid… Who didn't just tell me I wasn't alone but made me really believe it." 

He saw a hunger creep into her gaze that had nothing to do with any sort of physical need. "Someone who so understood how lonely I was that he had tears in his eyes just to hear me speak of it."

Rey's eyes dropped to her lap and his followed to find her lightly skimming her thumb across her fingertips, "Someone who cared so much that his hand shook just to be reaching for mine." 

She looked back at him then, "It broke my heart to think of how he'd been driven into an impossible choice between the Darkside that welcomed him or the Lightside that feared him." 

Her broken heart leapt into her eyes, nearly choking him. "I thought that if I could just show him how much I cared, he would surely turn back to the light. I was so sure that he was worth dying for that I risked everything to try to save him."

She’d said it! He wasn’t sure she would, but she had! His heart began to pound in his chest so hard he thought she might have seen it if she had looked there.

Her voice lost it's softness, “I nearly died trying to save him…" His pounding heart nearly stopped at the hatred in her next words. "From you.” 

The look she gave him then was one of pure loathing. Her voice grew louder and her eyes seethed with hatred. 

“But there was no saving him, was there?" She seethed. "Because he never existed, he was nothing but a cruel illusion you used to seduce me!" The betrayal on her face was as heartbreaking as it was unfounded. "When you were in my head you saw how lost I was, how much I needed to have someone give a damn! And you used that to manipulate me! I was just a tool for you to use to usurp power from your master! You never cared about me at all! You were just using me the whole time!"

He would have protested, set her straight about all of it, but he was taken aback by the golden glow that replaced the soft brown of her eyes.

“And you have the nerve to sit here and tell me this pack of lies? Do you honestly expect me to believe that you love me?" The outright hatred in her face and voice was more painful to him than anything he could even imagine. 

"You? Kylo Ren?" She snarled, "You really are a monster!"

The raw hatred in her words, the glowing yellow of her eyes, shocked him far worse than the sharp sting of her slap. 

In an instant she was gone.

He was shaken to his very core. He knew what the glowing yellow eyes meant, Snoke had told him. He’d stared into the mirror a thousand times, trying to will his own eyes to look that way. Seeing them in her face, though, was too much to bear. She was all that was good and right in his universe. 

He had to fix this. 

He had to fix this right now!

 

******************************************************

 

Poe grabbed Finn by the shoulder as he went to chase after Rose, "Give her a minute." He cautioned. "She needs time to think."

"She's hurting and she needs me." Finn jerked away.

"Give her a few minutes, trust me." Poe argued. "She needs her space! That's why she ran!" 

"I have to go to her!" Finn barked angrily. "You don't love her like I do, you don't understand!"

"I don't love her like you do. I don't love her like I love you, but I do love Rose, Finn, I do." Poe insisted stubbornly, refusing to let Finn out the door. "She is a wonderful, caring, honest, and beautiful person! You of all people know that!" He reminded Finn. "I might her in a different way than how I love you, but I do love her. Rose is my dearest friend next to you and right now my friend needs a minute and you need to give it to her."

Finn let go of the grappling hold he had around Poe's middle and stood up straight. "Poe." Finn said straining for calm. "She knows this base ten times better than either of us. I'm never going to find her if you don't get out of my way." 

Poe's eyes widened. He hadn't thought of that, but still, she needed some time to herself. "If she's not back and ready to talk by supper-time I'll help you look for her, please, just give her til then!" He begged, stepping out of the way of the door. 

Finn jerked the door open and looked at Poe for a few steady beats. "You're sure she'll be back?"

"She'll be back…" Poe trailed off before slowly adding, "For her things if nothing else and you can talk to her then."

"I don't want her even deciding to come back here for her stuff let alone actually doing it!" Finn protested.

"You can't make that choice for her." Poe said firmly. "You know her even better than I do, how will Rose react to you pressuring her when she needs time to think? If you go after her right now you're just going to push her closer to leaving you." He grabbed the back of Finn's hand as it gripped the doorknob and demanded vehemently, "Look me in the eyes and tell me I'm wrong!" 

"I can't let her leave me." Finn cried desperately.

"You don't get to make that choice for her." Poe said firmly. "And you'll only have a chance to change her mind if she comes back when she's ready to talk to you." Poe raked a hand through his hair. "That is if she even chooses to leave... which she's more likely to do if you don't give her the time she needs to think about it." He warned.


	5. Chapter 5

Rey paced back and forth, her mind a seething pit of rage. 

'The nerve of that man!' She thought furiously. Her fists clenching spasmodically as she paced. 'After what he did to me!'

A tiny voice echoed from the distant recesses of her mind, 'He saved you.'

'He didn't kill me, that's not the same as saving me!' She thought towards it, angrily. 

The voice grew stronger. 'You love him.'

'I loved Ben, but Ben wasn't real!' She argued. 'Kylo Ren only pretended to be him because he wanted me as an apprentice!'

'There is no distinction between Ben Solo and Kylo Ren.' It said, sounding as loud and strong as if it were talking to her from across the room. She was startled to realize it was a man's voice. She could feel his presence slip into her mind. 'He is an impulsive fool but your love can save him.' 

'I already tried that! It didn't work.' She thought bitterly.

'Try again.' The voice suggested.

'Who are you?' She knew that he wasn't a figment of her imagination.

'Who I am is not important.' He replied and she could feel him trying to wave the question out of her mind.

'It's important to me.' She insisted stubbornly, refusing to let him dismiss her curiousity.

He stopped trying to manipulate her mind and said almost gently. 'Knowing my name would only disturb you further.'

She could feel his presence in her mind so strongly that it made her neck hairs stand on end.

'Why would knowing who you are disturb me?' She said coaxingly. 'It's not like you're Darth Vader or anything.'

The voice made no reply but she could feel his amusement as it washed over. 'Are you?' Even her mind voice came out as a squeak.

'Not anymore.' He answered after a tense moment of silence and then she felt him leave her mind.

His sudden withdraw left her dizzy and nauseated, she stumbled over to her cot and sat down heavily. The room spun like the images in a kaliedescope and she was pretty sure she was about to faint for the first time in her life. It took her a moment to realize that she was hyperventilating, but once she did she concentrated on controlling her breathing.  
Darth Vader had been inside her mind! She could barely believe it. That fact both shocked and terrified her.

When the shock began to wear off she noticed a wide path of bloody footprints across the center of her room. She gasped and looked at her hands. They were bleeding profusely. 

Knowing that she needed medical attention Rey put on a robe and padded barefoot to the base infirmary.

The bright lights inside hurt her eyes after the dimness of both her room and the corridor. She scanned the room, looking for a med-tech. Not finding one she reached out with her feelings. She could feel that she wasn’t alone in the cavern, so she called out. “Anybody here? I need assistance.”

An elderly mon calamarian stepped out from behind a privacy screen where Rey could feel the faint signature of a nearly dead bith.

“I’m sorry to intrude.” She apologized. “I need help with these.” She held her hands up, knuckle side out.

“My goodness!” The apparently female alien said jovially. “That looks painfull!” 

Rey wondered about her good mood but decided not to ask. “More annoying than painful.” She grimaced. “Can you make it so I can get back to practicing my hand to hand?”

“I can make it so you aren’t dripping blood everywhere, but only time and bacta will heal those injuries.” The reddish brown fishlike creature clucked it’s tongue disapprovingly. “You should use hand protection anytime you’re going to strike something. Human hands are delicate things.” It scolded her.

“I will from now on.” Rey promised.

The mon calamari took a jar of pink liquid from a shelf and motioned her to sit next to a low table. “Stick your hands in here and keep them there until you can move your fingers without pain.” It said, removing the lid and sitting the jar on the table. “It will take a while.”

The liquid stung like fire at first, but Rey was grateful for the pain and for the company of the chipper med-tech who's name she learned was Krystil.

“Beg pardon, I’m not an expert in humans,” Krystil said after a little while. “Are your eyes supposed to change color like that? Or do you need a thorough exam?”

“What do you mean?” Rey asked, confused. Her eyes had always been light brown.

“They were yellow until a moment ago and now they’re brown.” Krystil tilted her head inquiringly.

“It must be the lighting, my eyes have always been brown.” Rey shrugged dismissively.

“Hmm, the lighting… perhaps.” Came the dubious reply. After that Krystil busied herself with the nearly dead bith.

Rey dismissed the doubt in the med-tech's voice. She’d met alot of people in her life but none with yellow eyes. It had to be the lighting.

Two hours later, Rey flexed her hands in the viscous liquid for the umpteenth time. “The pain is gone.” She called out.

“Good, good. Just keep your hands in there while I get some bandages.” Krystil instructed briskly as she stepped out from behind the screen at the bith's bedside.

Krystil bustled over with a bagfull of gauzey bandages in one hand and a big tube of ointment in the other.

“Pull your hands out straight up and keep them over the jar until they stop dripping. Every drop of this stuff is precious.” Krystil instructed as she laid out the bandages in organized little stacks.

Rey was startled. “You’re going to reuse this after I had my bloody hands in it?”

Krystil made a squishing sound that might have been a laugh. “It will be filtered and sterilized.”

“Oh!” Rey relaxed a bit. “That’s a relief.”

Rey watched in silence as Krystil smeared a thick cream on her raw knuckles and bandaged her hands with professional efficiency.

“Don’t hit anything for at least a few days.” Krystil admonished. “Come back for a bandage change tomorrow.”

“Thank you.” Rey said with heartfelt gratitude, then returned to her room.

The night was mostly wasted, her hands out of commission, her mind too preoccupied to even attempt translating so she paced and she thought back over her midnight visitors and all that they had said to her.

Kylo Ren, she refused to think of him as Ben, had sounded so sincere when he'd declared that he loved her that she began to doubt her own doubts about him… especially in light of his grandfather nearly immediately contacting her from beyond the grave. 

She paced and she pondered, pondered and paced.  
Why would Darth Vader care if she loved or hated Kylo Ren? What was it to him? Why bother coming to her at all unless he too was trying to manipulate her? But why would a ghost want to manipulate anybody?

She had so many questions about tonight and not a single answer to them, only frustration.

 

******************************************************

 

"It's suppertime." Finn announced. "I'm going to find Rose."

Poe followed Finn out of the room. "I'll look this way." Poe said, pointing down the tunnel to his left that would take him deeper into the mine. "You go see if she's with Rey then check out the upper levels."

 

********

 

Rose lay crumpled on the cold bare-stone floor of the utility room, shivering, her eyes staring sightlessly across the floor toward the generator shaft. She had wept until she had no tears left to cry, no sobs left to sob, until her mind and body were both numb.

Finn - her Finn - wasn't her Finn… He was Poe's Finn. He had always been Poe's Finn. She was the interloper, the homewrecker. She berated herself for not seeing it sooner. Poe did practically spend all of his meager leisure time in their room, hanging out, watching holos, even playing hologames til the wee hours with them some nights. 

Her mind interjected with the thought that Poe and Finn acted like a pair of good friends. She had never spotted a single thing that made her think they might be more than that. Poe had always treated Finn the same as he did her… with an almost familial level of comfortably close distance... they'd never had a single awkward moment as a friendly trio, until today. 

Part of her wished she hadn't knocked off an hour early, but she knew that hadn't even been a possibility in the state she was in after fixing the watermain. 

She couldn't unknow what she had discovered a few hours ago no matter how much she might want to. 

She thought about the bliss of ignorance and felt shame. Finn loved her enough to give Poe up for the sake of their impending marriage... he had loved Poe longer than he'd loved her… they had been together since before she and Finn had even been a thing... and he loved Poe as much as he loved her. 

Her thoughts shifted to Poe. After a lifetime of never finding another man attractive, Poe had fallen deeply in love with Finn. 

How could she blame him for that? Finn was the most incredibly wonderful person she had ever met, she'd have fallen for him even if she'd been a straight man, too. It wasn't Poe's fault, she decided.

Poe and Finn had already been in love when Finn had fallen in love with her. 

A fresh shaft of gutwrenching pain lanced through her heart. 

She wanted to be angry at Finn for decieving her, for not telling her up front that he was with someone… but she couldn't be. She had been happy, truly happy, everyday since they'd started seeing each other. She never would have known that happiness if he had told her he was in love with Poe… or anyone else. 

She couldn't quite bring herself to hold Finn's silence against him... he'd never given her a reason to doubt that he loved her with his whole heart. 

Not until today. 

********

Poe tried every door, looked and called her name into every unlocked one. 

This was all his fault, he knew it... his first thought when he had found out that Finn had feelings for Rose had been to break things off with Finn… but he hadn't even known Rose, hadn't cared if she'd someday, possibly, maybe get hurt. Then later, after he had come to know her, he'd come to adore her as a person, and had struggled with guilt, but he had been trapped by then. If he ended things with Finn he'd be losing his beloved and his best platonic friend as well... no more happy evenings, chilling with their little gang, playing games, telling tales or cracking jokes. No more of Rose's crazy experimental handmade meals, half of which were actually better than most replicator meals and the other half nearly inedible. No more of life as he'd come to love it.

He had chosen his own temporary happiness over the longterm happiness of the two people he cared most about. He had to find Rose and convince her to blame him, to forgive Finn, and to give life with Finn another chance. He owed them both far more than that, but at least he could do that much for them. He had to make things right, even if it meant never seeing either of them again. 

But first, he had to find Rose. 

He came to a corridor that dead ended at a door marked with symbols that indicated it was a dangerous place full of electrical hazards and paused, unsure if he should even touch the handle. After a moment he decided that he hadn't come this far to leave one stone unturned.

The door opened and the soft hum of electrical equipment greeted him at the same time as the smell of ozone and the sight of a crumpled body lying on the floor.

"Rose!" He gasped, rushing over to her.

She didn't move, she didn't startle, she didn't even blink. 

He checked the pulse at the base of her throat... slow but strong.

"Rose! God woman, what are you doing down here?" Holding her was like embracing a block of ice he noticed as he gathered her limp body against him. "You're freezing!"


	6. Chapter 6

Rose and Poe wept in each other's embrace until neither had it in them to weep further. Rose pulled back first. "Don't go."

"I can't stay and not be around you guys." Poe said sadly. "And I can't be just friends with him."

Rose swallowed hard and nodded, her mind made up. "Then don't." Poe looked at her uncomprehendingly so she expounded. "Don't stay away from us, don't be just his friend." Poe's face went blank. "Be our Poe... like you always have been."

"You mean…?" He couldn't even say the words for fear of having her deny them.

"I mean I want to go back to yesterday." She said firmly. "In our own way you and I had each other, I had Finn, you had Finn, and he had both of us... All that's changed between then and now is that now I know it, too."

"And you're cool with that?" Poe couldn't quite trust his ears. "You're ok with… everything?"

"Yeah." She smiled. "I love the life I have with the men I love. I can understand why you both kept it from me, you were right, I never would have gotten involved if I had known. I don't regret a single day that I've been with him... not even today." She cupped Poe's whiskery cheek and looked deeply into his eyes. "Because from now on my best friend-friend doesn't have to hide any part of himself from me... and neither does my fiancé. That makes the pain worth it. It may have hurt like hell for a little while, but I'm actually kind of glad this happened today… because that makes this the single worst day of my life, if this had happened any other day I'd have had two seperate horror stories to tell."

Poe was thoroughly confused by the lightening quick topic changes she'd just careened through. "Slow down…" he squeezed her shoulder gently. "First… you're standing here telling me I'm welcome to stay with Finn, and continue just living life as if you'd known all along?"

"Yes." She nodded, smiling.

"And you still love me like you always did?"

"Yes." She nodded again, smiling even brighter.

"You absolve us of guilt for hiding it from you, and aren't setting any kind of like 'no kissing' rules?" He made his fingers into quotation marks.

"Err, well, ya know… like don't go any farther than Finn and I do, anyway…" she looked away uncomfortably.

"That's fair." He smiled and thanked her before continuing, "ok, now what's this about another horrible story?"

She pointed to the square metal grate in the floor at the center of the room. "This is a utility shaft…" she said walking over to the grate, motioning for Poe to follow her. "This shaft is over ten miles deep… I spent over an hour of my life in an icy hell down there today."

"That's the watermain that broke?" He glanced down at the hole that was so small he knew he wouldn't even be able to avoid bumping his elbows everytime he moved his arms if he were down there. "Down there?"

"Half a mile down." She said matter-of-factly.

"And you came home to get warmed up and shit went down hill from there?" He said sussinctly.

"Yep." She chirped.

"Come on, you need a beer." He wrapped an arm around her and planted a kiss on her temple as they started the long trek home.

"I need a hot shower and a six-pack." she said tiredly.

"My place is two levels closer, and I have both of those things." He offered. "You can clean up there while I find Finn."

"I've never been in your room." She was moderately taken aback to realize that.

"My apartment." He corrected. "I have an actual living quarters."

"You do?" She gaped at him.

"You've never wondered where I live?" He squinted at her, not sure what to feel about that.

"It never occured to me to wonder," She shrugged. "I just kinda thought of it like - you live with us, and have a bed to crash in somewhere nearby." 

"You're not wrong." He grinned, deciding that he was quite charmed by her way of seeing things. "Here, this is mine." He lead her inside his apartment and could help watching her reaction.

The place was beautiful. Not a speck of bare stone was to be found in the entire space. The floors were tiled in a bright white polished stone that seemed to glow from within. The walls and ceiling were smooth and white with an ellaborate moulding around the junction of the two.

"This was the personal apartment of the mine superviser, he left all of this here." Poe waved an arm around at the upscale furnishings. "Wait til you see the bathtub."

"Bathtub?" her eyes bugged out. She'd never been in a real bathtub before.

"Come on." He lead her through the immaculant space to the biggest most over the top beatiful bathroom she'd ever seen.

"It's big enough to swim in!" She gasped.

"Almost." He grinned. "Beer's in the chiller, enjoy." He said backing out the door.

"We're hanging out here from now on!" She called after him then eyeing the huge blackstone bath she added quietly, "like right here, in this tub."

 

******************************************************

 

Across the galaxy…

He didn’t bother to check the time, he didn’t care what time it was. He dressed quickly then finger combed his hair as he hurried to the bridge of the Vader’s Vengeance. “General Hux,” he barked as he entered the bridge. “Assemble my fleet.”

The ginger General jumped to his feet and snapped a crisp salute. “How many ships would you like, Supreme Leader?”

“All of them!” He ordered. “Every ship within 4 hours of here with a hyperdrive.”

General Hux sneered at him. “My Lord, it’s the middle of the night…” the man’s words ended in a gagging sound as his throat constricted from Kylo Ren’s Force Choke.

“Do I look like I care what time it is?” He squeezed a little tighter then released his grasp. “Get my ships here, General. Right now.”

General Hux choked and retched for a moment before croaking out an order to the coms officer, a small balding man named Perez.

With his ships in motion he returned to his quarters to come up with an actual plan for what he wanted to do. It would be four hours before the bulk of his fleet was assembled, that was all the time he had to come up with something. He sat down at his desk and tapped away on the screen of his datapad for two solid hours before he was happy with his work.

He pushed a tiny datadisc into the port on the side of the little device that had inadequately replaced the tech in his long destroyed helmet and copied a file over, then tucked that disc away in his pocket and replaced it with a fresh one. He put a second file onto the fresh disc and left it in the machine.

Satisfied with his plan and preparations he was surprized to realize that he had over an hour left to kill. He’d go insane if he didn’t get rid of this nervous energy. His jangled nerves needed the soothing scratch of pen on paper, he decided, and pulled a small square of creamy vellum out of his desk drawer to pass the time with.

Her portrait flowed from his pen as if by magic. The image was of her as he’d seen her tonight, in that ridiculously alluring nighty. Her eyes as soft as they'd been when she'd described how she'd thought of him, just before he'd derailed everything, stared up at him from the page in record time. He searched those eyes for the ever present pain but didn't detect a trace of it. 

He sat back with a satisfied smile.

He’d always been critical of his own drawings, but this one was so real he could almost smell the warmth of her skin. He stared at it and promised himself he’d see her like that again, even if it killed him. ‘And it just might,’ he thought ruefully. 

That was a risk he was willing to take.

A buzzing sound broke into his reverie. He glanced at the panel near the door and saw a blinking red light. It was time to return to the bridge. He tucked the portrait he’d just drawn inside his overshirt, over his heart, and tapped the button with the Force.

“All of the ships in the area are assembled, My Lord.” Came Hux's disgruntled voice through the tiny speaker built into the panel. Without answering he tapped the button again severing the connection to the bridge, grabbed his datapad and set off to take command of his mission.

“General,” He said tearsly once he’d clear the doorway onto the bridge. “I am taking command of this ship and this fleet, you are dismissed.”

“My Lord?” General Hux made that normally respectful title sound like a sneer. 

The man annoyed him to no end, which is why he'd relegated him to night duty shortly after the attack on Crayt. “Leave my bridge.” He growled pointing at the door.

Hux bowed stiffly and walked away even more stiffly.

He caught the coms officer’s eye and said, “Open a channel to the fleet.”

“Yes, My Lord.” Officer Perez hit a few buttons then looked at him and nodded.

“This is Supreme Leader Kylo Ren.” He said, projecting as much authority into his voice as possible. “Until further notice this fleet is to be considered a nonviolent diplomatic convoy. Under no circumstances is any ship in this fleet to fire a shot without my personal authorization. " He paused a second to gather his thoughts. "I am aware that diplomacy isn't something we do and that many of you might be unhappy about this mission so I am ordering all First Order personnel to be on guard against any possible mutiny. The reward for preventing or quelling an insurrection is immediate promotion to the rank of General." He felt it prudent to remind them, "No matter what happens when we reach our destination, do not fire a weapon without a direct order from me. Stand by for rendevous coordinates.” He nodded to Perez, who immediately closed the channel.

“Set a course,” He ordered, stepping closer to the plasteel viewing panel at the front of the bridge. He closed his eyes, rubbed his chest, and reached out searching the cosmos for a trace of her. “Thirty parsecs in that direction.” He pointed toward a distant star. “Once you have the coordinates, send them to the rest of the fleet.” He could hear the rapid tapping of fingers on the navcomputer panel. 

He turned to face the Bridge Captain, an older gentleman with a kind, square face, named Glissando . “How many ships do we have?”

“Two hundred, seven ships, My Lord.” Glissando replied promptly.

He turned back to the viewscreen and automatically supressed a smile. “Excellent.” He said dismissively.

“Coordinates sent, Supreme Leader.” Perez called from the coms station.

“Take us there.” He said, taking his seat.

When the ship snapped back into real space a couple of hours later he jumped out of his seat and pointed out a new direction. “Thirty parsecs.” He ordered then sat back down to tap away on the screen of his datapad. He'd had this idea in mind for quite some time, and he used the time between hops to hammer out the details and refine his proposal.

It took the better part of three days, hopping through space, but he could feel that she was close by. He rubbed his chest absently for the hundredth time in the past three days. “Hold here.” He ordered, too tired to make the final jump. “Order a stand down, ten hours." He'd give her that much time to come to him before he went in after her. "Call any ships in that range to join us. I’ll be in my quarters.” He left without waiting for confirmation.

In his room he took the drawing out, laid it gingerly on his desk next to his datapad, gazed at it briefly then laid down, boots and all, and fell into an immediate and deep, dreamless sleep.

He awoke several hours later, confused by the lack of dreams. He hadn’t slept like that in so long that it worried him to have done it now. He showered and shaved quickly, dressed even more quickly then scarfed down a quick and tasteless meal from his in-chamber replicater. He preferred fresh food, but he had too much to do to waste the time waiting for it. Throwing the empty cartons away he went back into his personal refresher and cleaned his teeth, it wouldn't do to confront Rey with bed-breath, before heading for the bridge

“How many more ships have shown up?” He asked, as soon as he entered onto the bridge.

Captain Glissando snapped a salute and answered promptly. "One hundred, twenty additional ships have joined the fleet, My Lord."

Three hundred, twenty seven ships. 'That should do it,' he thought to himself. “Bring up a holo of this quadrant.” He ordered. As the map appeared he walked over to where a tiny dot blinked out the location of the fleet. 

He studied the various nearby systems, reaching out to each one, searching for her. After a while he felt her, she was less than a quarter parsec away, in the Hadron system. “Hadron!” He barked, startling the crew. "Isolate it." The Hadron system enlarged to cover the entire map area. He probed each planet and moon until he was sure he'd found her. "There! That moon! Magnify and enhance!" He could hardly contain his excitement.

The holo changed it’s shape, magnifying until the moon in question was the size of his head. “Send the coordinants of this moon to the fleet, remind them of what I said about mutiny.” 

He swapped the discs from his pocket and datapad, tapped on the screen for a moment then ejected the disc. "Sub this into the message.” He flicked the disc toward the coms station and used the Force to bring it to a hover in front of Perez's face.

He rubbed his chest, comforted by the drawing tucked away there. He really, really hoped that this worked out as he planned.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This eill be the last chapter until after Christmas, I have to finish writing the Finn/Rose/Poe story and edit it before adding it to the existing Reylo Story... Nobpeeking, if you haven't read Rise of the Halcyon... DON'T CHEAT YOURSELF OUT OF THE EXCITING CONCLUSION TO THIS FICLET!

Poe woke up instantly at the disconcerting buzz of his emergency communicator. 

Finn and Rose had stayed over until the wee hours this morning, playing holovid games... Rose proved her superiority over them once again at the space shooter fantasy game that had occupied many an evening between the three of them.

In the three days since Rose had discovered and accepted his and Finn's relationship they'd hardly been apart except to work and sleep and he had never been happier.

He'd been expecting something bad to happen, so the buzzing communicator came as no real shock. He snatched up the little device from his bedside table and activated it, "Dameron." He barked.

"Sir, we need you in the control room, right away." Came a mildly panicked voice.

"What is it?" He demanded, bolting upright in bed he checked the time. Still two hours before his normal wake up time.

"The First Order, sir. They've found us."

Terror shot through Poe. "I'm on my way!"

 

******************************************************

 

Rey woke up groggy and confused. She lay frowning at the ceiling, unable to figure out why she felt such foreboding over not having been jolted awake in tears. It wasn't that she wanted to have the dream, she definitely did not, she just couldn't understand why she hadn't.

She sat up and cast a nervous glance around, the fine hairs on the back of her neck prickled with the eerie feeling of being watched. She couldn't shake the feeling even when a quick scan of the area with her feelings confirmed that she was alone in the tiny room.

Shouts echoed down the corridor outside of her room followed by the pounding boots of several people running past her door. Just as she reached her feet the door burst open and Finn stuck his head in. "Rey! Grab your stuff! We're evacuating the base!" He said hurriedly, barely looking at her, his attention more fully focused in the corridor as people jostled past him.

"Evacuating the base?" She repeated as a really bad feeling twisted through her guts.

"They found us!" He rushed off, slamming the low-tech door behind him.

Rey didn't have to ask who 'they' were... there was only one 'they' that could cause this amount of panic in such a fortified base. Guilt slipped through her veins, she knew without a doubt that their rekindled connection had lead him straight to her. 

She had been training for this day all year long, but now that it was here she felt completely unprepared. She dressed hastily without even bothering to look at what she was putting on, then threw her meager belongings into a large dufflebag and sprinted to the main control room.

In the large cave that served as central command for the entire Resistance, the scene that greeted her eyes was one of total chaos. Rebels of all ranks were rushing to and fro, packing or destroying equipment left, right, and center. In the midst of the maelstrom stood Poe Dameron barking orders like the General he had recently become.

"Poe!" She called and hurried over to speak with him, Finn hot on her heels. "What's going on?"

He glanced at her then at Finn, frowned and in a low voice he said, "A routine patrol just spotted about half of the First Order fleet assembled less than a parsec from here. Over three hundred ships practically on our doorstep."

She gaped at him. "Three hundred ships? Where did they come from? How long have they been here?" Her mind swirled dizzily, throwing questions at her too fast to ask them all verbally.

"Unknown," He growled his frustration. "It's been twelve hours since anyone's been by that way." Poe's frown deepened mightily.

Her brain could barely process the idea of a fleet that size. "Has he tried to contact you? Sent any demands?"

Poe didn't need to ask who, only one person could be at the head of that fleet. "No, but he brought enough firepower to turn this whole rock into dust. I doubt he's come to negotiate our surrender." He said grimly.

"Where is he?" She asked, formulating a plan in the back of her mind. It wasn't a good plan, but it was all she could come up with on such short notice.

Poe pointed to a section of space on the miniholo map that was open above the huge table in the center of the room. "This flashing red dot is his fleet. This blue dot is us." The dots were frighteningly close together. "When he makes his move we'll either be gone already or dead very quickly."

"I have to go to him." She was absolutely certain about that, whether or not she'd be alive long enough to actually talk to him she was less certain of.

"What? No! That's suicide!" Poe said sharply. "Finn! Help me out here, buddy!"

Finn pleaded with her. "You can't go! We need you! The Resistance needs you!"

"How long until the evacuation is complete?" She asked, ignoring the plea in her friend's eyes and voice.

"About an hour." Poe responded. "If we don't bother with the small stuff."

"And how long will it take him to get here when he decides to move?" She arched a brow at him.

"About ten minutes." He said as quietly as the chaos would allow.

"I'm going." She insisted. "I'll buy you an hour."

"No way, you're too important." Poe argued. "You're the last Jedi, the Resistance doesn't stand a chance without you!"

"If I don't go, there wont be a Resistance." She said stepping a little closer. "This is about me. He found us because of me. He'll keep finding us because of me." She took a breath to steady herself before continuing earnestly, "If I don't go to him, he'll kill every one of you just to get to me. If it's my destiny to die today I can face that but I refuse to take all of you down with me."

Poe looked at her as if seeing her for the first time… it made her uncomfortable.

Finn placed his hands on her shoulders and said seriously, "Rey, if you go to him, he will kill you! You don't even have a weapon!"

She gave him a weak attempt at a comforting smile. "He'll want to talk to me before he kills me." She said confidently, then added, "And I don't think he'll be able to kill me face to face." 

"What makes you think that?" Finn shook her sharply by the shoulders. "What in your entire history of knowing him makes you think he wouldn't carve you up and blast the pieces into space just for the fun of it?" 

She was slightly ashamed to admit, "He's in love with me." 

Both men and several bystanders gaped at her like she'd lost her mind.

"That's crazy talk!" Finn yelped. "Kylo Ren doesn't care about anybody!"

"It really is." Poe said, dropping a hand onto Finn's shoulder and moving to stand next him in solidarity. "He's a madman, Rey. A horrible, evil nightmare of a person."

Finn nodded at Poe enthusiastically then asked Rey, "Why would you even think something that crazy?"

"Because he told me so." She said with a touch of bitterness in her tone.

"Think about it! Even if that was true, how long has it been since you've talked to him? He might not love you now!" The handsome former stormtrooper said in a mildly patronizing tone.

"It's been less than three days." She confessed quietly.

"What?" Finn's mouth hung open nearly as wide as his eyes.

"Look, it's hard to explain," Shrugging out from under his hands, she said firmly, "And we don't have the time to get into it right now." She looked at Poe and barked, "I'm going. Get everybody out of here as fast as you can." She left them both standing there gaping and hurried off to the hangar bay to board the Millenium Falcon for what she hoped would not be the last time.

 

******************************************************

 

Poe gaped as Rey dashed out the doorway of the control room with her rucksack slung over one shoulder. A big part of him wanted to try again to stop her, but he knew she was right, her going to confront Kylo Ren was the only good chance they had of saving the Resistance.

He glanced at Finn who looked at him. "Get going, get Rose and your things and get to a transport. I want you both out of here, ASAP."

"We're not leaving without you." Finn said incredulously.

"I'm not asking you," Poe said in a tone that didn't invite arguement. "I'm telling you to evacuate."

Finn opened his mouth to argue but Poe cut him off, "That's an order." Then his voice softened. "You're not needed here, I am. Get Rose to safety, I'll be along soon."

Finn looked at him briefly with pleading eyes then pulled himself together and snapped a mocking salute. "Yes, General."

It was the first time Poe had ever pulled rank on him, so Poe could understand Finn being upset, but there was no time to spend debating the merits of staying together until the last transport. He wasn't sure if he wanted to strangle Finn or hug him as he watched his loved one stomp off... either way, he decided then and there never to pull rank again unless it was life or death.

Poe put aside thoughts of his family and focused on the task at hand. "All of these computers gotta go, get em packed up and on the transports!" He barked then grabbed a scurrying technician. "Why are my evac sirens not going off? Get someone on that right now, we don't have the time to knock on every door to see that nobody's left snoozing." 

He clapped his hands loudly, urging them all to hurry a little faster. "Hustle people, hustle!"

 

******************************************************

 

"Supreme Leader, the coordinants have been sent out, the fleet is awaiting your orders, Sir." The communications officer, Perez, informed him in a ringing tone.

"My Lord! A ship has just dropped out of hyperspace directly ahead!" The helmsman, who's name Kylo Ren did not know, cried.

"On screen!" He ordered, jumping out of his seat. "Magnify!" He knew that ship! His heartbeat doubled it's pace. "Lock it down! Forward tractor beam! Bring it to bay 94!" He shouted and rushed off deck to go and meet her.

He had a moment to catch his breath as the Falcon was pulled into the bay. The feel of her jangled nerves, when he reached his mind out to make sure she was there, was the sweetest thing he had felt in a very long time. He steadied himself with a deep breath and purposefully wiped both his mind and face free of all emotions with a trick he'd picked up to help him hide his most private thoughts from Snoke. It wouldn't do to reveal too much too soon.

The Millenium Falcon came to rest on it's landing gear with a soft thud and the door hissed open. Rey strode down the ramp, walked right up to him - stopping just out of arms reach - and hissed, "You really are a murderous snake, you know that, right?"

His eyes skimmed over her, taking in every detail.

Her hair was a tangled mess, her face tired and drawn. She had dark circles under her -thankfully- soft brown eyes. He was disappointed to see that she wasn't wearing her usual desert garb but had opted instead to wear what appeared to be a mismatched collection of clothing from the Resistance's rubbish bin. Her faded grey undershirt was at the same time too wide and too short, the shoulder seams fell halfway down her arms while the bottom hem was a good two inches above her navel in the middle. Her beat up brown leather vest, on the other hand, was a little too small, he doubted it would even fasten over her breasts. The soft blue wool of her britches bagged at the waist and calves but clung like second skin to her hips and thighs. He'd never seen anyone looking so rumpled and so beautiful at the same time.

"Say something!" She barked. She had to tamp down the urge to punch him in the mouth. An entire battalion of stormtroopers had their blasters pointed at her, hitting him now would be suicide.

"You look terrible." He said, blandly.

... as if he didn't look pretty rough himself with his unscarred left cheek sporting a four-fingered bruise in angry shades of purple, green and yellow.4 Although, she had to admit, his hair did look nice... and his head to toe black attire was immaculant... 

She gaped at him, clearly incredulous, and demanded, "Why did you come here, Kylo?" making sure to inject as much venom into that name as possible.

He ignored the question and turned on his heel, "Come, let's talk privately." He ordered and strolled away, leaving her no choice but to obey. 

She followed him as far as the doorway of a tiny room with an interogation table in it before refusing to go further. "You've got to be kidding me!" She glared at him.

"Inside." He motioned with his hand and she slid across the polished floor, all the way to the table. Once the restraints had clicked closed around her arms and ankles he dismissed the half dozen stormtroopers that had escorted her here at blasterpoint. The door swooshed shut and he turned his full attention to her.

Facetiously he asked, "Comfortable?"

"Do you honestly believe this going to work?" She glared. 

"What 'this' would that be?" He asked in such a cooly obtuse tone that it made her teeth ache with the desire to rip his throat out.

"This! It wont work!" She snapped. "You can Destroy everyone and everything I care about and I'll still never turn to you!" She fumed, jerking against the restraints that bound her arms to the table. "I want nothing to do with you!"

He said mildly, "You have such a low opinion of me." 

"You are low! And treacherous!" Her eyes and voice were brimming with a fury that bordered on madness when she added for good measure, "And evil!"

He paced back and forth in front of her twice more, never taking his eyes off of her, then clicked his tongue in a tsk tsk. "Tell me, what low, treacherous, evil things do I have planned for you now that I have you here?" 

He really wasn't sure of the answer to that question, himself. Though talking to her had been on his list of things to do, he had assumed she'd be slightly less rabidly hateful toward him when he got that chance. In the mood she was in he was pretty sure he couldn't possibly say anything to her that she would even bother to listen to at this point.

"Whatever it is, you might as well get on with it." She said belligerantly. "I'm not afraid of you." 

"Good." He said dismissively. He paced a few more laps back and forth in front of her as she grew more restless and fretful. 

Feeling her agitation gave him an idea.

"Let's begin, shall we?" He said almost pleasantly as he stopped and turned to face her.


End file.
